Life path, mentors, and catalysts

From point A to point B or at least well before point Z, we keep on encountering people as well as forks on our road that make us ricochet here and there, just like if we were meandering down a pinball machine.

Sure we also make willful or random choices and decisions that also affect to a various extent our own life paths. Today, I'd like to focus on folks or events that influence us, either by mentoring us or triggering as well as facilitating decisions on our part that can be far-reaching in terms of how they define our entire lives.

When I review my own experience I can only find one or two mentors, four life experiences, one book and almost a dozen people that triggered some of my life transformative ideas. In other words, my mentor has been few, life experiences have counted a lot, one book impacted me much and the rest was the sum of many people influencing the course of my life.

This said, what's my responsibility in all this? Having the guts, the folly and the curiosity to chose a radically different path!